WD Continues to Rapidly Restore HDD Unit Shipments with Help of Hitachi GST.

Western Digital on Thursday said that it had managed to significantly restore production capacities after devastating flooding in Thailand in October, 2011. In the Q3 of the company's FY2012 (ended on March 30, 2012) WD itself and its Hitachi GST subsidiary (which officially became a part of WD in early March and thus only shipped for WD for 3.5 weeks) sold 44.2 million hard drives.

WD reported revenue of $3.0 billion (including $614 million for HGST), hard-drive unit shipments of 44.2 million with average selling price of $68 and net income of $483 million, or $1.96 per share, on a GAAP basis for its third fiscal quarter ended March 30, 2012. In the previous quarter (calendar Q4 2011) Western Digital shipped 28.5 million of hard drives and reported revenue of $2.0 billion amid net income of $145 million. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $2.3 billion, net income of $146 million and shipped 49.8 million hard drives.

"I am pleased to announce today that the recovery activities related to both WD operations and those of our supply chain partners impacted by the Thailand floods have reached a point where we now have the capability to adequately meet anticipated customer demand in the current quarter and beyond," said John Coyne, chief executive officer of Western Digital.

Rapid increase of shipments by whopping 55% from 28.5 million hard disk drives to 44.2 million drives in one quarter is a significant achievement, even keeping in mind that for 3.5 weeks of the quarter WD also sold Hitachi-branded hard drives. Hitachi also suffered from the flooding and therefore WD's management will have to work hard to restore HGST's manufacturing capacities as well. Nonetheless, it is clear that WD can is just about 11% behind its shipments in the same period last year and is likely to be on-track to restore all of its (and possibly HGST's) production facilities by late June.

"Our third quarter performance demonstrates the potential of the new Western Digital, with just three and a half weeks of HGST results combined with the standalone WD business. Competing in the marketplace with our separate WD and HGST subsidiaries, we now have the product portfolio, technology resources and the people to fully serve the needs of a significantly expanded customer base and to better address the tremendous growth opportunities in the storage industry in the years ahead," added Mr. Coyne.